


A Tiny Little Cupboard of Curiosities

by Kleenexwoman



Category: Agent Pendergast Series - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:30:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 7,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/pseuds/Kleenexwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Pendergast series snippets I wrote, collected together for the first time. Many have been abandoned or left behind by canon. Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. first kisses I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the one with Nora and Margo K-I-S-S-I-N-G oh and Bill

  
**"I can't believe it," he said. "Two heroines from my books, together for the first time."**  

_Nora's sharp, luminous green eyes traveled up and down Margo's toned body. She was used to looking for little things that made a world of difference--the shape of a potsherd, the curve of a cuneiform. So she didn't miss the way Margo's pupils dilated when she looked at her, the way the top button of her shirt was casually undone to reveal the creamy tops of her ample breasts, or the blush that crept from her cheeks down to her neck._

_She moved closer to Margo, putting her slender hand on the other woman's thigh. "I really appreciate you going to all this trouble for me," she breathed. "You didn't have to."_

_Margo blushed even brighter. "It wasn't just your brains and confidence that intimidated me," she admitted. "You're so gorgeous..."_

_Nora smiled, and brought her lips to Margo's. Their tongues_  

"You've got to be kidding," Nora said, from behind Bill's shoulder. "Tell me you're not putting your weird girl-on-girl fantasies about your wife into your book. Tell me millions of people are not going to read this scene." 

"Think of it as a compliment," Bill suggested. "I just want to tell the world how amazingly sexy--" 

Nora snorted. "Sure," she said. "Like that scene in  _Thunderhead_  with me and Sloane. Naked. In the stream. That was just a compliment too, right?" 

Bill sighed. "I got it wrong, didn't I? See, this is why you have to tell me things." 

"You got it wrong," Nora muttered. 

For one thing, it hadn't been her who'd kissed Margo. It had been  _Margo, grown bold on sisterhood and wine, who'd pressed an awkward kiss to Nora's lips. And it had been Nora who clung to her for just a moment, savoring the unexpected softness of Margo's mouth, the heat of her body, before pushing her gently away._

_It broke her heart to see how Margo curled up into herself, drawing back from Nora as though even the proximity would be unwelcome. "Sorry," she said. "Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. It's like at that meeting--sometimes I don't think before I--"_

_Nora took her hand. "It's okay," she said. "It's just...we can't do this. I mean, there's Bill..."_

_"Do you think he'd care?" Margo asked. "I mean...really?"_

_"It doesn't matter if he would," Nora said. "He doesn't know."_  

"Okay," Bill said patiently. "So what  _did_  I get wrong?" 

She stared at Bill's laptop, and thought of Bill composing the scene with a sly grin on his face, moving around bad caricatures of her and Margo like toy dolls, all creamy breasts and slow blushes and deliberate seduction. She thought of coming home late, disheveled, unashamed, and Bill waiting for her with a fresh sex scene on his laptop that no reality would ever match up to. She thought of Bill watching them, every movement made a thousand times more awkward, more unreal, by his eyes. 

"Nothing like that happened," she said. "And cuneiform doesn't have curves." 

 


	2. first kisses II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and here we have Corrie and Constance.

  
**Maybe I'll never die, I'll just keep growing younger with you (and you'll grow younger too)**  

Corrie's used to Pendergast by now. She's learned how to roll with his eccentricities, his habit of doing things without explaining them at all, the little anecdotes and fun facts he spouts that make her eyes glaze over half the time, the graceful stiffness that (she suspects) hides nothing more than sheer awkwardness. She even understands him, a little--they're two of a kind, misfits that have settled comfortably into their own strangeness, learned how to wear it and use it and  _own_  it. 

She doesn't think that she'll ever get used to Constance the amazing hundred-year-old teenager. Whenever she stops over at Riverside Drive, Constance is there, reserved and blank and unreadable in a way Pendergast never was. Corrie wonders if she's dried out over time like the older books she shelves. She can hug Pendergast now and be certain that he'll live, but she's afraid to even touch Constance, half-scared that the girl will crumble like a sheet of old paper. 

And that sucks, because as much as she's afraid to touch her, she  _wants_  to. She wants to unbutton that old-fashioned black dress Constance always wears and run her hand down her white back--just to see if her skin is dry and brittle with age, or waxy with suspended time, or still smooth and supple and warm. She wants to hug her, to see if she can feel the warmth of Constance's body against her skin, or if all of it has leached out of her, if she's cool like a corpse. She wants to run her hands through Constance's black hair, compare the shades of the inky strands to her own. She wants to see her pale skin flush red, her full lips curve in a smile. 

Sometimes she thinks Constance is staring at her, in those moments where Pendergast is out of the room, and it's just them and she can't ever think of anything to say. She doesn't know if she should be scared. 

* 

Pendergast is the one who's paying her tuition, her room and board, buying her textbooks and a laptop and new clothes so she'll fit in a little better than she did before, and she doesn't mind that--it's not like he can't afford it--but it gets to feeling a little one-sided. So when he calls her up on a Friday night and asks her for an urgent favor, she figures her trig homework isn't as important as whatever he finally needs from her. 

"It's Constance," he explains. "She's quite alone at the house, and I'm rather concerned. She's been acting strangely lately. I thought perhaps some company, someone her own age..." 

"I'm on it," Corrie says, simultaneously disappointed and thrilled. She shoves a weekend's worth of clothes and her toothbrush into a backpack, and that silver Rolls-Royce is there in five minutes. The guy drops her off at the house, and she realizes that she's going to be completely, entirely alone with Constance. For at least two days. 

Constance is in the library, curled up on the sofa. She looks up blearily as Corrie announces her presence by dropping her backpack on the floor. "So you've come to keep me prisoner, too," she says. 

"I can't just come over to hang out?" Corrie asks. She settles onto the sofa next to Constance, still not daring to touch. "Pendergast's gone, I don't have any homework...we have this place to ourselves." Constance angles her head away from Corrie, staring at the embers glowing in the fireplace. "Seriously. Girl's night in. We can do our nails and talk about cute boys and raid the fridge. Whatever." 

She steels herself and touches Constance's hand. Constance looks at her then, her eyes more intense than Corrie's ever seen them, and all of her chatter dries up in her mouth. "You don't want to be here, do you?" Constance asks her, her voice low. "You don't  _have_  to be." 

"Look," Corrie says, "I'm not here to babysit you." She licks her lips nervously, running the tip of her tongue across her new snakebite piercings. "If you want to be alone, that's fine. I'm not stopping you from doing anything. But I'm here if you want to..." She trails off as she realizes Constance is staring at her, staring at her mouth, at the glint of her piercings in the dying firelight. "You know," she finishes. "Anything." 

Constance raises her hand, and for a second, Corrie thinks she's going to slap her. But she threads her slim fingers through Corrie's hair instead, and Corrie closes her eyes. She feels soft, warm lips brushing hers, a wet tongue running over her lips. She feels teeth gently catching her lip ring before letting it go and pulling away, and then it's her who surges forward, who slides her tongue between Constance's lips. 

She doesn't know how she expected Constance to taste--like the way old paper smells, or like mothballs or wax. But she tastes sharp with the tang of Corrie's tongue stud in her mouth, and sweet with something that tastes like licorice. She tastes alive, real. Corrie can't wait to taste the rest of her. 

 


	3. il nome della cordula

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corrie and Constance, established relationship.

  
_"Coriander."  
"Wait, wait, I know that one...no, I don't."   
"It's a spice. Here, I'll show you. Taste."   
"Ew. It tastes like soap."_ 

Constance refuses to believe that "Corrie" is her real name. 

_"Corinne."  
"That's really pretty. What's it mean?"   
"'Maiden', from the Greek. The poet Ovid used it as the name for his love."   
"I've read some of his stuff. He was kind of freaky, wasn't he? But I haven't been one of those for a few months."_ 

"I should know your full name," she says, "if we're to be..." And she always blushes at that, and Corrie would like to finish the sentence, but she doesn't know what they are. Friends? Lovers? Incestuous foster sisters? Any relationship with Constance isn't going to be normal, isn't going to have an easy label. 

_"Corvetta."  
"That's a car."   
"It's a raven. Corvus corax. Some cultures consider them to be the souls of the damned."   
"Oh, great. But no. Nevermore."_ 

Constance is collecting names. She reads them off to Corrie when they're sneaking crackers and cheese and chocolate mousse in the kitchen at midnight; when they're curled up in Constance's feather bed, naked and warm and cozy in the candlelit dusk; when they're sitting on one of the balconies that face the overgrown garden, looking at the stars. 

" _Coraline."  
"Like the movie?"   
"No, like coral. Like it, but not quite."   
"I'm the real thing, if I'm anything."_ 

Corrie likes that Constance thinks she's mysterious, thinks she has secrets. Sometimes she feels too obvious, too flat and bright and loud to ever be interesting--a nothing of a teenager, surrounded by people who've done everything and could live forever. The names make her feel like she could be anybody. 

" _Coronette."  
"That's a crown, right?"   
"A small crown, without arches, meant for use by lesser royalty. Some of them were quite pretty."   
"No. But I kind of wish, now."_ 

It's a fairytale game, like Rumpelstiltskin. Corrie wonders what Constance gets if she picks the right one. Will Corrie turn into a princess? A toad? Will she find out who she is, who she could be? Will she remember anything? Will she forget everything? Will she belong to Constance forever and ever? 

_"Cornelle."  
"Okay, you've lost me. Isn't that a brand of casserole dish or something?"   
"A horn--well, like a horn."   
"So...horny? Oh, come on, you don't know what that means, either?"_ 

She'd like to belong to Constance, because it doesn't seem like Constance has anything else of her own--not her sister, not her childhood, not her own time. Everything she is belongs to someone else. So she gives Constance her name to give back to her, something that nobody else will know. 

_"Cordula."_  
"I give up."   
"Heart. It just means heart."   
"I can be that." 


	4. When Corrie Met Laura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A note: Sorry for the asterisks, the place where I originally posted these has a word filter that doesn't like swearing.

Corrie's not actually sure she wants to go into law enforcement. She's only eighteen, and there's so much she could do--she could be an anthropologist and explore the world, or do social work and try to help other misfit kids who don't have a rich guy like Pendergast to help them out. But, you know, it's always a possibility. And she'd like to spend more time with Pendergast, so when he mentions that she might like to see what it's like to work out in the field, she jumps at the chance.   
  
"Oh, no," he says. "Not with me. The cases I prefer to handle usually take an extraordinarily hazardous turn, and it would be utterly irresponsible of me to  _deliberately_  expose you to..."   
  
"Fine," she says, "whatever." It's not like she really wants to be up close and personal with a serial killer or a C.H.U.D., anyway. It's not even like she  _wants_  to be side by side with Pendergast, kicking @ss and taking names and learning all his awesome little tricks.   
  
It's not like she ever has these dorky little dreams about saving him from absolutely certain death while he looks on adoringly, or about him gallantly taking a bullet for her and telling her he loves her and practically dying in her arms (before she nurses him back to health, natch). Or even the one about them having to go to New Orleans to arrest some serial killers, and they turn out to be vampires, and she has to pretend to be the Vampire Princess and that he's her ghoul slave so they won't all suck his blood, and she wears this slinky black dress and leads him around naked on a chain and dog collar...yeah, sometimes Corrie's dreams take more of an Anne Rice turn.   
  
(Anyway, it's not like she  _can't_  get involved if she really, really wants to--there are ways to get into the thick of things that don't involve her being tossed out on her @ss the second things get kind of hairy. It's kind of scary how much she can learn from thirty seconds of flipping through Pendergast's Blackberry when he's out of the room. He's really good at Tetris, for one thing.)   
  
She figures he'll get her to hang out with his friend D'Agosta. Okay, Pendergast always calls him his "colleague" (or "my  _dear_  Vincent" when he thinks she's not listening), but colleagues aren't just  _there_  sipping a beer and waiting for dinner, when she drops by to nose around in the library at 891 Riverside Drive. Corrie doesn't know anything about the guy except that their first meeting ever involved him blowing chunks, and that Pendergast has known him since Corrie was in grade school, and she figures one of those two things makes him all right.   
  
Pendergast mutters something about D'Agosta not being the role model he had in mind. "However, his--that is, Captain Hayward might be willing--"   
  
"What the f*ck," Corrie says. "You think I need a  _role model_?" And, okay, she knows she's kind of a charity case, but this is insane.   
  
Pendergast looks pained. "I am not requiring you to do this," he says, "but since you expressed interest in the possibility..." And it's clear that it's Hayward or nothing, and that just makes it seem pointless, but Corrie can tell that for some reason it's something he really, really wants her to do.   
  
It's not until after she agrees to do it, and he smiles, that she actually starts thinking about  _why_.   
  
 *******    
  
Corrie hasn't been in a police station since Kansas. The New York City Police Department is huge and modern and nobody's paying any attention to her, but just the sight of the cops bustling around is making her all jumpy. Like any minute someone's going to come over and start interrogating her, and of course they're not going to believe anything she says, and before she knows it she's gonna find herself in cell and this time it's for good and Pendergast isn't gonna come to bail her out--   
  
\--she's hyperventilating, f*ck, and this is not the way to make a good impression. She went out and bought this cute black vintage suit that makes her look actually sort of serious, and she took out most of her piercings (except the tongue stud, because who's going to see that one? And there's no way she's going to take out her new eight-gauge earlobe plug), and she even dyed her hair to a nice uniform black, and all that's going to be wasted if Pendergast and this Hayward person come back to find her red-faced and freaking out.   
  
So she does what pretty much always makes her feel better, which is to nose around until she either figures out what's going on or finds something cool. And it's not too long until she finds Hayward's office, name on the door in gold and everything. The door is closed, but she can hear little snippets of conversation leak out.   
  
"...not some glorified babysitter." It's a woman's voice, self-assured but not loud.   
  
"A  _mentor_ ," Pendergast says, his voice as smooth as Corrie's ever heard it. "She's a very intelligent young woman, and she could use some direction."   
  
"We  _have_  a Youth Outreach program," Hayward says. "I'm not in it for a reason."   
  
"For underprivileged inner-city youths, yes. It's a very fine program, for what it is. But Corrie needs--"   
  
"For God's sake, I don't have time to coddle your underaged girlfriend."   
  
"Think of it as being a role model to the next generation of professional women--a very crucial position."   
  
She heards Hayward take a deep breath. "For the last time, Pendergast, I am not going to shepherd some weird little punk you picked up in the sticks around New York. I am  _through_  with this."   
  
There's a pregnant, almost dangerous pause, and then Pendergast is speaking almost too softly to hear. So of course Corrie has to put her ear to the door.   
  
"If your objection to the idea is based on her association with me, Captain, I assure you that I understand. It is for that reason that I came to you. At the moment, I am her only real adult influence, which is barely adequate to..." and then they move away, and Corrie's trying to figure out exactly where he's going with this. Her only real adult influence? God knows her mom wasn't much, but it's not like she's some feral street child.   
  
"...a sense of responsibility? It's awfully self-aware of you," Hayward says, and Corrie jumps back when she hears the doorknob turning.   
  
"I am nothing if not so," Pendergast says, and the door opens.   
  
Corrie had almost expected some big butch chick in uniform blues, but Hayward doesn't look anything like that. She's pretty. Long black hair, actual makeup, little pearl earrings, and this gray dress suit thing that would probably make her look frumpy if she didn't look so confident, standing straight and shoulders out like a man. She gives Corrie this cool, appraising look, and Corrie tries really hard to look eager and serious instead of giving her a smartass look back.   
  
"Captain Laura Hayward," Pendergast says, like he's introducing them, "my good friend Corrie Swanson."   
  
"Hi," Corrie says.   
  
Hayward taps her earlobe. "That," she says, "you're going to have to take that thing out."


	5. Two Times Pendergast Tried BDSM With Someone He Trusted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pendergast/Margo, Pendergast/Viola.

"I can't believe I'm doing this." Margo fingers the imitation pearls around her neck, nervous, not sure what to do with her hands. She's still in her outfit from their dinner date: the high heels she walked so awkwardly in, the nylons she kept adjusting, the short skirt and long jacket she'd dug out of the back of her closet that matched something like formality. Her mousy brown hair is piled high on her head, brittle and messy.   
  
Aloysius kneels in front of her, naked, his thighs already starting to ache with the strain of not moving, of her indecision. He thinks of running his hands up her legs, worshiping the turn of her ankles, the curve of her calves. He thinks of her wrapping the cheap beads around his throat, tightening the strand one pearl at a time until his head begins to swim. He thinks of her pushing him onto his back, onto the floor, and digging the heel of her shoe into the hollow of his throat.   
  
"Please," he says. Please, to all of it.   
  
Margo shakes her head. "What do you  _want_  me to do to you?"   
  
"Anything you desire," he tells her, the desperation seeping through in his voice. "That's the point. You get to do anything you want."   
  
"I like that," Margo says. She walks around him, surer now in her heels, examining him from every angle. He watches her, revels in her inspection, her judgement. There is no part of him that could not pass, save perhaps his scars; still, he desperately wants her to find some invented fault, something she could punish him for.   
  
She sits back on the bed, defeated, her legs spread childishly and her feet dangling. "But I don't  _know_  what I want."  
  
***   
  
Viola's four-poster bed is softer than he'd like, goosedown mattresses piled high. When he's spreadeagled like this, face-up, each limb tied by soft silk rope, he can feel his back sag. There's almost no leverage to arch his back in pleasure or pain. He decides to take it as a challenge, a test of his ability to transcend the material; to do so with pain is child's play, almost too easy, but to forego pleasure is sometimes beyond even him.   
  
"You're sure they're loose enough?" she asks. "I don't want your foot turning blue and falling off, now."   
  
"Quite certain," he says. He could slip out of his bonds in a moment if he tried. Viola doesn't need to know that.   
  
She caresses his ankle, then walks her fingers up his leg, to the inside of his thigh. "So," she says. "I can do anything to you. And you won't tell me to stop, or look at me like I'm mad." He nods. "Or make smart remarks about it."   
  
"I can't promise I won't do  _that_ ," he tells her. "However, you may gag me to prevent such an occurrence, if you wish--"   
  
"You're always so  _serious_ ," Viola muses. She grins and falls upon him, her slim fingers tickling his sides. He gasps and twists, unable to escape the assault.   
  
"Laugh," she commands him. "Laugh, for once. I want to hear you  _laugh_." 


	6. Five Ways Vincent D'Agosta Figured Out Aloysius Pendergast's Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HE'S SECRETLY SHERLOCK HOLMES (because of Leng's longevity potion)

1) He's watched enough old mystery flicks on TCM to have practically memorized Basil Rathbone's performance as Sherlock Holmes (didn't like Jeremy Brett; too cadaverous, too manic), and Pendergast fits him to a T. Same profile, same smooth voice (Southern accent practically pasted on), even the same way of moving. D'Agosta is pretty sure Pendergast isn't related to the actor, so he draws the only other conclusion he can. It may not be the most logical way to think, but when you're dealing with a fictional character who's over a hundred years old, what's logic?   
  
  
2) His mastery of bartitsu. Seriously, who knows bartitsu?   
  
  
3) "My wife, Irene--"   
"I thought she was named Helen?"   
"Yes--of course--it was a nickname--"   
  
  
4) He's caught him at Riverside Drive in Leng's Victorian togs more than once. D'Agosta has to admit, the man definitely has the figure to pull off a waistcoat and cravat. "Dress-up time?" he'd asked teasingly, and Pendergast had shrugged. "Occasionally, I become nostalgic for my home--this has a peculiar way of quelling that feeling." D'Agosta hadn't realized that "home" meant a time as well as a place until he'd heard Constance refer to her own time the same way more than once.   
  
  
5) Sometimes D'Agosta's too impatient, too distracted to follow Pendergast's line of thinking, to catch a crucial clue. Pendergast is patient with him as he is with nobody else, but he swears he's heard him mutter under his breath more than once: "Watson would have gotten that." D'Agosta doesn't like being compared unfavorably to a man decades dead who may not have even existed, and the more he rereads the stories, the more the comparison nags at him. Not as clever, not as attractive, not as useful patching up injuries...hell, he's not even as good a writer, no matter how much Pendergast rhapsodizes over his novels.   
  
One day, Pendergast doesn't bother to pretend to whisper, and D'Agosta gets too fed up to hold back. "Yeah, well, I'm not Watson. Sorry to disappoint you,  _Sherlock_." Pendergast looks away, and D'Agosta moves in front of him, refusing to be ignored. "He's dead, and I'm here, and if you want to deal with that, fine. But if you can't stop comparing me to him--"   
  
"You'll what?" Pendergast whispers, meeting his eyes with that ice-blue gaze, daring D'Agosta to--to do what? D'Agosta doesn't know, and eventually Pendergast looks away. "I apologize, Vincent. His absence has weighed on my mind for decades. I was never able to--" He cuts himself off. "I apologize," he says again. "It is most unfair to you, when you have been such a good friend to me."   
  
And that's the end of that, for a while. D'Agosta keeps calling him Pendergast, and Pendergast never asks him not to. The past is best kept in the past. But something about that moment keeps nagging at D'Agosta. What was Holmes never able to? He knows Holmes was a solitary type of guy, that Watson was one in a million...and he knows he's no Watson. Is there anything he could be to Pendergast that Watson never could be to Holmes?   
  
It takes a long time (and a little creative Internet research) to figure it out, and even longer to figure out whether it's something he really wants. But when he finally makes the move, it's like everything between them has fallen into place.   
  
Pendergast pulls back from the kiss, those blue eyes shining. "Watson would have never--"   
  
"Yeah, well," D'Agosta grins, "I'm not Watson."


	7. Two Women

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some of this got jossed when "Fever Dream" came out. Boo. Also, I keep writing Margo as sort of wanting to get with Pendergast but not really, which is probably a reaction to my puzzlement at the popularity of that ship.

Aloysius majors in Anthropology because it will give him a good excuse to study abroad. He can't run far enough, can't leave New Orleans far enough behind, and when his semester in Zimbabwe ends, he stays. He ends up wandering through the Rift Valley with another redhead, a violinist who carries his instrument in a battered case and seems content to let it speak for him. In the villages they pass through, his companion plays old jazz songs and tribal lullabies for money and food and lodging for the night. When it's just them, he plays his own compositions--wild, dark, delicate melodies that make Aloysius fear the dark and the monsters it holds.   
  
The sun turns his skin red and his hair even whiter than it was before, and then one day he gets heatstroke. When he wakes up, there's cool water dripping into his forehead and a warm hand on his cheek. Helen is the first thing he sees. When she smiles at him, he smiles back for the first time in years, and no longer fears monsters.   
  
*   
  
Margo's certain she can do anything. She can finish her dissertation, she can become a professor or explore the rainforest or roam the world vanquishing monsters that hide deep in the dark. She's stared primordial evil in the face and understood how to kill it, and after that, nothing is too hard, nothing too dangerous for her. Not even men-- _a_ man--the most dangerous beast on the face of the earth. She and Pendergast have a rapport now, she thinks, and maybe this time, with him, it'll be different.   
  
When they're in her bedroom and his calm blue eyes are sweeping across her naked body, she doesn't feel exposed or judged, but she doesn't feel excited, either. When he kisses her mouth, she doesn't feel anything. And when he slips one hand around her waist and strokes her breast, she feels that familiar squirming sense of wrongness, the slight panic and overwhelming revulsion she always feels, and she has to push him away.   
  
He moves away from her and sits on the bed, hands folded in his lap. Not disappointed, she realizes, only waiting. Willing to do what she thinks might work, like in the tunnels under the Museum. And, like in the tunnels, she knows what to do. She knows which tools to use--the strap-on she bought in her sophomore year and then hid in the back of her closet, slightly embarrassed to own such a thing. She knows how to approach him--stepping into the contraption as though she would brook no objections, stroking the shaft of the toy and moving towards him as she watches his eyes grow wider and his thighs spread apart. She pushes him gently onto the bed, and his soft moan when she enters him is, if not arousing, at least gratifying.   
  
She's Margo Green, and she killed a monster, and she can screw a man into the mattress, and if she can do those things then she can do  _anything_.   
  
*   
  
Helen wants to live in New Orleans, and Aloysius doesn't object. They buy a house across town from the ruins of the Maison. She loves the warmth of the city, the color, the noise, the people; she loves it more than he ever did, and as he learns to see the city through her eyes, it loses so much of the poisonous memory he went to Africa to shake off. After only a few months, he can breathe without the weight of his family on his chest.   
  
And then she leaves.   
  
He wakes up one morning to find a note on his pillow. "See you soon. Love, Helen XOXOX." On the back, "PS I will bring you back something nice." She doesn't come back that morning or that afternoon, or even that evening. The next day he's frantic, searching the house for her, finding clothes and toiletries and her wallet missing. He interrogates the housekeeper and all the servants; they know nothing. He calls the police. When that fails, he goes out alone in the streets of New Orleans and searches for her.   
  
A week later, the telephone rings, and it's Helen. "Hello, darling," she says. "I'm in Tangiers. Are you up to anything interesting?"   
  
He nearly drops the receiver. "Why did you go?" he asks. "Are you all right?"   
  
"I'm fine," she says, puzzlement in her voice. "I'm visiting some cousins. Did you worry about me?"   
  
"I didn't know..." He settles on the floor, weak with relief, and listens to her talk about the bazaar and her cousin's new baby and how the sea looks at night. She promises she'll be back in a week with a present for him, and blows him a kiss through the phone. He counts the days, wandering around the house like a ghost, and in a week she shows up at the door with a present for him--an ivory carving, abstract and beautiful, complicated and elegant and angular.   
  
Sometimes she leaves in the hours before dawn, and leaves a note on his pillow. Sometimes she allows him to drive her to the airport, and gives him a kiss on the cheek before she goes; he always tries to follow her to see where she's going, but she's good at losing him in the crowd. She never tells him where she's going until she calls him. She always brings him back something nice.   
  
One Christmas, he buys them both cell phones. She loses hers two months later in the Amazon River.   
  
They take trips together; France, India, Madagascar. She still leaves when she wishes. He learns to be ready to leave and go halfway around the world on a moment's notice so that he won't spend the time she's gone wandering around the house, missing her. Their reunions are the sweetest things in the world, the hours they spend together more precious than anything he has ever known.


	8. Ulysses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was originally going to go with the "Two Women" snippet, but I ended up posting it at a different time for no particular reason.

Viola wants to show Aloysius every inch of Capraia: the cool stone villa she calls her own, the vineyard where wild roses grow among the grapes, the orchards of squat, twisted olive trees and leafy apricot trees. She takes him for walks on the white beach, in the ruins of the Roman citadel on the far side of the island, the meadow where some long-ago peasant kept his herd of sheep.   
  
"Why do you love this place so much?" he asks her one night, while they're having wine. It's too sour; she's let it ferment too long. She swirls it around the glass and thinks of pouring it out. Aloysius's glass is nearly empty. _Because it's beautiful_ , she wants to say, but there are so many beautiful things in this world she doesn't care about.   
  
"Because I know every inch of it," she says. She glances over at him; he's looking out at the sea, his fingers on his chin. "My turn. What are you thinking of?" She's asked him this before, and she's never yet liked the answer.  _My brother_ , he'll say, or  _A series of murders I investigated once_ , or  _A woman I knew long ago_.   
  
"That you're very beautiful," he says, and shifts his gaze to the sky. "And that the moon is rising."   
  
Every inch of this island knows their bodies. They've tumbled down onto the beach together, their bodies half in and half out of the surf, covered in foaming water and fine sand. They've made love in the vineyard and orchard and meadow like acolytes of some fertility god, sweaty and dusty, blessing the ground with their juices. She's pulled him onto the great oak table in her breakfast nook before even the taking of toast and green tea, insisting on an early morning kiss that quickly turns passionate.   
  
She dreams of having a bed like Odysseus's and Penelope's, carved out of a living tree, something that will last forever. She could carve Aloysius's body out of a tree, stone, clay. She knows every inch of it. Every scar, every blemish, the way each muscle flexes.   
  
His eyes are somewhere else, across the water. She doesn't know where he is looking. New York? Tanzania? The moon? Would he tell her if she asked? Is it as important as his hand on her thigh, his lips on her neck, the way he'll hold her in bed tonight? Does she care where his mind is, as long as his body is here?


	9. Shuffle Drabbles For Viola

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I put my MP3 player on shuffle and wrote whatever came out.

_1\. "Robot Girl," Was Not Was_  
  
Diogenes presses the tip of the knife into her skin, and Viola nearly faints with the pain she imagines she feels. But there is no pain. There is no feeling at all. As he drags the knife along her skin, there is no blood.   
  
He peels up the flap of tanned skin to show glistening silvery wires underneath. “You’re unloved and unloving,” he repeats, “and now you know why.”   
  
She stares at her arm, her cognitive processes grinding to a halt as metallic things whir in her head, as sparks cloud her vision. All she can hear is his laughter.   
  
*  
  
 _2\. "I Put a Spell on You," Marilyn Manson_  
  
 The herbs she’s sprinkled into the olive oil are working. Viola can see the blond agent’s expression change from indifference to wonder, see the blush spread across his cheeks. She smiles, cocks her head. flirts a little. Her magic is subtle, but she doesn’t need very much of it.   
  
She sees the other man, the heavyset cop, sniff at the olive oil—his face turns sour. He is watching her carefully, knowingly. But how could a New York policeman be familiar with the magic of these isles?   
  
Her fingers curl into fists under the table. She won’t let him interfere.   
  
*  
  
 _3\. "Don't Make Me Kill You Again," the Groovie Ghoulies_  
  
Diogenes tosses Viola’s limp body into the sea and smiles. His brother’s obnoxious sweetheart is finally dead.   
  
That night as he lies sleepless, a clammy pair of hands wrap around his throat. Viola’s hair is tangled with seaweed. When she opens her mouth, saltwater spills out.   
  
He buries her in the garden this time. At sunrise, she claws her way up from the lilies, her face caked with dirt, and goes for his eyes.   
  
Finally, he cuts off her limbs and flies to New York. But her feet follow him across the bottom of the sea, to revenge and Aloysius.   
  
*  
  
 _4\. "Folsom Prison Blues," Johnny Cash_  
  
The gun is still hot in her hand. Aloysius’s eyes are blue and blank. His blood is so very red.   
  
Diogenes’s arm slips around her waist. “Was it good for you?” he asks. “Do you love him now? Do you feel shame? Grief? Fear?” He smiles wickedly. “Arousal?”   
  
“Nothing,” she says. “I don’t feel anything.” She holsters the gun, and knows it wouldn’t have made any difference if she’d stayed away and let him live. “What about you? Are you satisfied?”   
  
“I don’t believe I ever shall be,” he answers softly, “but it’s as much as I will ever get.”   
  
*  
  
 _5\. "Addicted to Bad Ideas," World/Inferno Friendship Society_  
  
At age seven, she spent a night in the woods and got pneumonia.   
  
At age thirteen, she lost her virginity to a Gypsy she met on vacation with her parents in Florence.   
  
At age twenty-one, she drank a thousand-dollar bottle of wine and threw up on her father’s shoes.   
  
At age twenty-eight, she leapt into the English Channel with stones in her pockets to see if she'd die.   
  
At age thirty, she wrote love poetry for a man who she knew would never love her back.   
  
At age thirty-five, she flew to New York for a man she’d met once.   
  
*  
  
 _6\. "Untold Stories," Hot Rize_  
  
It’s like trading, the secrets they tell.   
  
He tells of Helen, her dark beauty and grace; she tells of her school friend Adelaide, the kisses they told nobody of. He tells of Charlie, how he grew from a shy, dreamy boy to a man he loved who died.   
  
He tells of his father, and she can see his eyes grow hard; she tells of her mother, how she died in her boudoir, surrounded by her cold jewels like a pharaoh.   
  
He tells of Diogenes, the times his brother loved him the only way he could.   
  
She tells him fairy tales.   
  
*  
  
 _7\. "I Saw a Stranger With Your Hair," John Gorka_  
  
She can never put him out of her mind, the way she could the others.   
  
Her next has his hair, white gold, and she loves the way the light falls on it as she cards it through her fingers. Her next wears black suits, his figure slim and graceful in them, and her next has the cutting blue eyes that pierced her heart. Her next whispers sweet nothings to her in a drawl like honeysuckle and swamp heat.    
  
She knows she’s collecting pieces of him, but they’re never enough. She’s left the most important piece of herself with him forever.   
  
*  
  
 _8\. "Ramble On," Led Zeppelin_  
  
The chill sea breeze sweeps across the balmy island, and she knows fall is coming.   
  
Aloysius sleeping next to her is warm, familiar. He wouldn’t like the cold. She thinks of their passion cooling in the English autumn, dropping away like leaves from trees. Indifference is a thousand times worse than loneliness.   
  
Anyway, she’s been on Capraia long enough. Her feet itch for new grounds, her hands and mouth for new desires.   
  
Perhaps they’ll meet each other again, paths crossing by chance, by fate. And when they do, they’ll be strangers all over again, their hearts and bodies uncharted land. 


	10. Pink Silk Kimono

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pendergast femmes it up Blanche DuBois-style.

It's not really crossdressing.

He likes disguises. It's not that it's that much fun to be another person, especially not one as ridiculous and obnoxious as he usually is--it's that it's fun to fool people. He gets tired of being himself to other people, tired of seeing others react the same way to his suit and tie and skin.

Sometimes he wonders if his personality--his quirks, his mannerisms, his carefully cultivated likes and dislikes--are just another kind of disguise. Like a fresco, the paint adhering to the plaster underneath until they're chemically bonded.

What does a black suit and black tie say about him, anyway? That he's sophisticated and minimalist? Professional? Unimaginative?

What does a pink silk kimono say about him?

He bought it in Japan. Saw it in a little shop in Tokyo, full of tourist tat, but very well-made tourist tat. It was meant for a woman, obviously. The fabric a pale pink, with a graceful ivory white lily silk-screened across the back. It slipped across his skin like a lover's touch. It was a woman's kimono. He lied and told the shopkeeper he was buying for his (dead) wife. The shopkeeper could not have cared less, but he felt the lie was necessary.

Yes, there is a part of him that is a honed steel blade, but there is a part of him that is silk. New York encourages hardness--the scent of snow and steel--and he has become hard, black and white, washed out, sometimes cruel, self-denying. New Orleans encourages softness--the perfume of oleander and sweat--and it was easy to be soft there. It's why he left; he could no longer afford to be soft, to indulge, to feel much.

People guess at his accent. His favorite comes from a tour guide, a plump woman with short blonde hair and an easy grin, herself infused with a flat Midwestern accent that slips easily into a honking Bronx rasp or the Hispanic lilt she says she picked up from her Puerto Rican ex-husband. "You sound like Blanche fuckin' DuBois," she says. "Always depending on the kindness of strangers." He laughs, because Blanche certainly could have been a relative, a mad, wilting, whorish relative.

He goes home that night and takes the pink kimono out of his closet, letting it fall against his skin. It's soft, like the caress of the lover he does not have. When he slips it on and looks in the mirror, he looks transformed. Silk, not steel. He feels foolish, prancing about in the privacy of his bedchamber with a woman's nightgown on. It's a ridiculous caricature of the queer South, of some Tennesee Williams wet dream, but he doesn't take it off. He lies down on his big empty bed and tries to imagine himself home, the sticky moisture of the air kissing his body like a lover's mouth, the sickly perfume of dead souls and dead flowers wafting in through the window.

It sets off his skin very nicely. He thinks of being seen in it, a graceful silhouette from the window. By a stranger, a lover? Who would see him, who would care?

He thinks of the wilting flower Blanche, the roughness of Stanley. He wouldn't want someone too rough. Gentle, not delicate, and strong but not violent. If he is a work of art, he needs a frame; if he is an element in a work of art, he needs a contrast, something earthy and simple to set him off. It is vain to think of himself that way, and he obliges the urge, touching himself through the fabric and imagining it's large, rough, gentle hands. Hands that could break him, if they wished and if he let them, but that do not.

When he comes, it is of thinking of himself wilting like a lily in those gentle, strong hands, earthy like New York.


End file.
